1. Field of the Invention
The present invention describes a computer program process and apparatus for electronic processing of cashless payments between customers and dealers, merchants and the like by means of portable security medium, in particular chipcards.
2. Description of Related Art
Cashless payment by chipcards have become common in many areas of daily life. Here a distinction is made between account-related and non-account-related cashless payments with chipcards. An account-related chipcard requires an account with the bank issuing the card. If the customer wishes to process a cashless payment with his chipcard, he usually inserts the chipcard in the dealer""s card reader machine, a data link is created to the customer""s bank, the bank checks the presence of a covered account by the chipcard holder and if the account contains adequate cover, authorises payment to the dealer. The disadvantage of this account-related chipcard lies in the fact that the creation of an on-line connection to the customer""s bank can take a very long time or because of overload on the bank system, no connection can be established at all. In this case the customer must pay with cash or other payment means. If the customer has another account-related chipcard from another card-issuing bank, he can repeat the same process with this chipcard.
A non-account related chipcard alternative to the account-related chipcard is the so-called money card. The money card contains a specific money amount in the form of bytes which are transferred to the dealer system when payment is made. The advantage of this money card is that the customer can pay the dealer direct without on-line connection to his bank. A disadvantage of the money card is however its currently low acceptance by customers and the resulting lack of infrastructure.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to provide a process and a device for cashless payment transactions which combines the advantages of the account-related and non-account-related chipcard but without their disadvantages.
An advantage of the present invention is that the customer can perform several payment methods with individual payment features using his customer card. From the bank he receives a standard contract for all payment methods and a consolidated report on payments made and electronic vouchers which can be subsequently processed within an electronic business application. The customer can if he wishes pay the dealer totally anonymously because only the bank can correlate the customer card number to a customer.
With a dealer terminal and a standard dealer application, a dealer can perform all common payment methods and the bank is the sole partner for all contract conditions, definition of terminal hardware, queries etc.
Complex processes such as querying the required payment method, customer address, proposed application etc. on payment are not required. The dealer has access to the electronic vouchers in the case of customer complaint.
The bank can offer both dealers and customers a comprehensive standardised system and the bank can operate profitably with attractive fee rates.